The Mark: ‘Arrow’ Season 01 Episode 05 “Damaged”

This week’s Arrow was probably the one that fans were looking forward to the most. And the hype was lived up to because it was easily the best episode since the pilot, and probably the best of the series thus far. “Damaged” picks up after the end of last week’s episode and the events that went down. The primary focus of this episode is proving Oliver’s innocence after his arrest last week. And there’s definitely some unexpected plot twists as we learn one piece of Oliver’s master plan.

The most impressive part of this episode was that it didn’t reply heavily on the action but heavily on personal drama. Writers  Wendy Mericle and Ben Sokolowski’s script for the episode is fantastic and moved quickly but allowed scenes the time to breathe and characters to interact. The dialogue in this episode, which has been a bit of a problem here and there, was noticably improved upon. We also saw quite a few sub-plots developed this episode. The primary of the two being the romance between Oliver and Thea and the bro-mance between Oliver and Diggle.

While the episodes high point’s were the drama…the action was still there. The big scene was definitely Deathstroke vs Yao Fei on the island and probably the best action sequence the show has offered so far. The very well choreographed scene does leave you wanting more though and hopefully we’re going to be getting it very soon.

Overall, the episode was definitely the best of the series so far and balanced a good amount of both drama and action. We still have no idea who John Barrowman’s character is but after this week you can definitely assume he’s definitely going to be someone huge. Trust me, we’ve got our fingers crossed that someone calls him Maxwell Lord at some point.

The comic references and easter eggs you might have missed:

– Edward Fyers: The characterappears in the comics as Eddie Fyers. In the comics he is a skilled mercenary and actually one of Green Arrow’s close allies.

– Kate Spencer: Similar to the show, Kate Spencer was a federal prosecutor. She eventually became the Manhunter character.

– Fishnets – In the episode, Laurel makes a reference to wearing fishnets at a Halloween party.  The most iconic part of Black Canary’s costume are her fishnet stockings.